Sunday, May 18, 2003
A lot of girls walk really crooked here, pigeon-toed and shuffling, but not the men for some reason. It's totally gender-specific and weird. Is it considered feminine to walk like a crippled retard? My knees and ankles hurt just thinking about it. Girls (again, not the guys!) do this thing where they dress up in full costumes like Disney characters, just to walk around in public. Costumes like a little sailor girl, a pink Little Bo Peep, Goth schoolgirls, etc. Ineffective words will have to suffice until pictures go up. Even that won't do it justice. Trust me, it's strange. And the funny thing is, nobody else bats an eye!
Many people love American culture here and think we're arbiters of cool, bowing to their every need with a smile, but apparently they don't extend that kindness as much to living and working here. My mom was telling me stories of young people that would return to the US because they would get paid way less here just because they were foreigners, and of old ex-pat people that lived here for 50 years, had children, but still couldn't become citizens. She also told me of a young dental assistant friend of hers that went back to the states for 5 times the pay. Is any of this true? Who knows, sounds scary regardless.
Japan is both greener and bigger than I thought: there are very lush rural areas, it's not just all one big sci-fi city like I had imagined, and the whole country is as big as California and Oregon combined. The extended area of Nagoya, the city I'm in right now, is about the size of LA County! What makes it feel smaller is the incredibly efficient transportation system. Imagine the interconnectedness of the NYC subway system on a larger scale and better technology. The cities are hyper-connected with subways and buses to every area, so every place is about 20 minutes from the other (try that on a San Diego bus - it'll take you hours to get anywhere), and the cities themselves are connected by the Shinkansen bullet train. Very very cool. I can see living here and really exploring the country just because you can.
Tomorrow I'm off to Nara, a small fishing village that my dad says is a must-see, and then on Wednesday, I'll either do more museum stuff here in Nagoya or go to Hiroshima to see the memorial. Then from Thursday on it's Tokyo!
The design museum was cool, although smaller than expected because one whole floor was closed for some reason. It's so neat to see how celebrated design is here and how much they get it: no wonder it's trendy amongst designers to ape the styles from here.
They have a drink called Sweat here. At first I said ewwww and snapped a picture or two (but of course). Then I tasted it - not half bad! It's like a Japanese Gatorade, with the same logic too: make a drink with the same concentrations of electrolytes/salts as our blood and it'll be digested quicker than water.
Maybe it's from growing up in California, but I feel like I got used to the people and culture here pretty quickly. The teenagers all look and act the same as the ones back home, the same poser wannabe "doesn't it look fabulous to be disenfranchised" attitude as the idiot teenagers that hang out at Zanzibar in PB, and even the same tricked-out import tuner Fast And The Furious cars! I think this would be more of a shock to people from other places. I remember a girlfriend from Ohio way back in the day and we went through culture shock at UCSD in two very different ways: it was so culturally and racially homogenous to me, and so jaw-droppingly ethnically diverse to her!
I've been typing away this morning, trying to fill that dead time from waking up at 5am everyday because of the jet lag. My parents got me a room at the university's visiting guest hotel/complex/thingy because their place here is so tiny, but when I made myself at home on the first night by expressing the desire to simply pass out on their couch, my dad couldn't resist the opportunity: he spent the night at the guest room because it has a TV! Apparently they both missed watching the boob tube, since they both spent the night there last night. My mom just got back now; my dad is changing for work and will be here shortly. We're about to have breakfast, then my dad and I are going to his office at the university. I'm going to meet some of his colleagues that I did some website work for, toil away on one of the computers to catch up on some work, and then it's off to more museums and shopping.
Oh yes, that reminds me: anyone want something from over here? Speak up now or you're getting useless trinkets.